Educational knowledge : changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community PDF
Preview Educational knowledge : changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community
Page i Educational Knowledge Page ii SUNY series FRONTIERS IN EDUCATION Philip G. Altbach, Editor Page iii Educational Knowledge Changing Relationships between the State, Civil Society, and the Educational Community Edited by Thomas S. Popkewitz Page iv Grateful acknowledgment for excerpts from chapter 8, "Rethinking Decentralization and the State/Civil Society Distinctions: The State as a Problematic of Governing," The Journal of Educational Policy 11, 1 (1996): 27–51. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2000 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246 Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Nancy Farrell Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Educational knowledge : changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community / edited by Thomas S. Popkewitz. p. cm. — (SUNY series, frontiers in education) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0791444031 (hbk : alk. paper). — ISBN 079144404X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Education and state Crosscultural studies. 2. School management and organization Crosscultural studies. 3. Education– –Social aspects Crosscultural studies. 4. Educational change Cross cultural studies. I. Popkewitz, Thomas S. II. Series. LC71.L335 2000 379—dc21 9920650 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Page v CONTENTS Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Contributors xiii I. Introduction Chapter 1 3 Globalization/Regionalization, Knowledge, and the Educational Practices: Some Notes on Comparative Strategies for Educational Research Thomas S. Popkewitz II. Globalization and the Restructuring of Education: The State and the Restructuring of Teaching Chapter 2 31 The Restructuring of the European Educational Space: Changing Relationships among States, Citizens, and Educational Communities António Nóvoa Chapter 3 59 Restructuring the State in Eastern Europe: Women, Child Care, and Early Education Marianne N. Bloch and Benita Blessing Chapter 4 83 Public Education, Teachers' Organizations, and the State in Latin America Carlos Alberto Torres Chapter 5 111 New Schools for New Times? Notes Toward a Sociology of Recent Education Reform Geoff Whitty, Sharon Gewirtz, and Tony Edwards Chapter 6 131 When the Center Cannot Hold: The Devolution and Evolution of Power, Authority, and Responsibility in Russian Education Stephen T. Kerr Page vi III. Governing, Governmentality, and Educational Change Chapter 7 155 Decentralization and Recentralization in the Argentine Educational Reform: Reshaping Educational Policies in the 1990s lnés Dussel, Guillermina Tiramonti, and Alejandra Birgin Chapter 8 173 Rethinking Decentralization and the State/Civil Society Distinctions: The State as a Problematic of Governing Thomas S. Popkewitz Chapter 9 201 From the "People's Home"—Folkhemmet—to the Enterprise: Reflections on the Constitution and Reconstitution of the Field of Early Childhood Pedagogy in Sweden Gunilla Dahlberg Chapter 10 221 Governmentality in an Era of "Empowerment": The Case of Tanzania Frances Vavrus Chapter 11 243 The Construction of Discursive Space as Patterns of Inclusion/Exclusion: Governmentality and Urbanism in the United States Lisa Hennon IV. Intellectuals, Knowledge, and Educational Change Chapter 12 256 Critics and Reconstructors: On the Emergence of Progressive Educational Expertise in South Africa Johan Müller Chapter 13 285 The Educational System, Social Reproduction, and Educational Theory in Imperial Germany Peter Drewek V. Comparative Strategies Rethought Chapter 14 305 World System and Interrelationship Networks: The Internationalization of Education and the Role of Comparative Inquiry Jürgen Schriewer Index 345 SUNY series, Frontiers in Education 349 Page vii PREFACE The book began as a small symposium at the University of WisconsinMadison concerning international reforms in education. The symposium was organized to bring historical and social sciences perspectives into strategies for comparative educational research. The book's authorship has broadened since that original meeting but the theoretical purpose has been maintained. The concern is to place educational discourses into a dialogue with a number of important intellectual currents in the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, and history. The contributors to this volume consider changes in the operation and objectives of national states, social groups within nations, and educational communities, as they exist within and among nations. The focus on the international setting underscores the interrelatedness of state practices with larger sets of cultural and economic relations that exist among nations. The focus on the international setting in which national policies are formulated is intended to underscore the interrelatedness of state practices with larger sets of political, cultural, and economic relations that exist among nations. We seek an understanding of changes that are occurring within the international arenas that are pertinent to national educational reform. Our attention to the State as an organization and the state as an analytical concept is intended to provide historically specific case studies that can be used to refine our understanding of national educational practices. This distinction between theoretical deployments will be signaled in this book with the distinction between capitalized State as an organization, and state as a problematic of governing. By focusing on educational reforms as an arena of political conflict, we are interested in a development of social theory that is historically grounded. Tied to the study of policy and practice is the treatment of educational knowledge as a social practice related to issues of power. The concern with knowledge is to consider how policy and pedagogy are governing practices through the rules and standards applied in educational problem solving. Knowledge is viewed as an integral part of the social phenomena that bear upon the framing of educational policy and the restructuring of education. In an almost Durkheimian sense, we can think of current national and international efforts to reform education as constituting a reformation of the patterns of governing by which the State, civil society, and economy are related. Page viii Two approaches to comparative studies are maintained. One is to explore multiple countries as the case. The comparison among different countries is guided through an interaction between the historical phenomena under scrutiny and theories that enable an exploration of differences and similarities among the different phenomena. The second approach is case study of national educational phenomena. Local, national practices are examined in relation to international, global patterns of change. This approach also weaves together the theoretical interests in comparative studies with local practices. The use of case studies makes it possible to understand the particular nuances and tensions that are implicated through the struggle for educational change. Four tentative observations organized the themes that are taken up by the book: 1. We believe that conventional notions of the State that emphasize institutional structures and stability are inadequate for the task of assessing change in education. The blurring of boundaries through economic changes in world capitalism, the global circulation of discourses about social and educational change, and suprastate organizations such as the European Union call for a nuanced analysis that rethinks the idea of the state as a governing mechanism. 2. An understanding of interrelation of local, national systems and international systems is central to the development of our understanding of change in education. Historically, demands that are placed upon national educational systems are best understood within a complex set of relations with international systems. This relation is best expressed linguistically as globalization/regionalization in which the two terms are viewed as mutually tied to each other and thus conceptually as one. 3. The exploration of the governing patterns of education is important to interpreting the changes that are taking place. By governing, this book is concerned with two layers of educational practices. One refers to the state administrative and policy practices such as changes resulting through neoliberal policies related to school choice, teacher certification, and the training of teachers. A second use of governing relates to the discursive practices of education. The second notion of governing is tied to the discursive practices whose distinctions and categories order the world, define the place of individuals, and establish rules and standards by which expression and practices are made possible. Whereas the first theme of governing focuses on the constraints and restraints imposed through institutional relations, the second theme enables an exploration of how power is deployed through the rules and principles that order knowledge. Page ix Many of the chapters in the book deploy Foucault's concept of "governmentality" to consider the nonbinary relations in the study of change. It is argued that the processes of modernization involve new responsibilities, expectations, beliefs, and attitudes about the individual who is to participate in education. These aspects of "the educated subject" are embodied in educational discourses of policy and pedagogy. Then new conception of the "self'' is one who has a national identity as well as an international identity as a member of a larger political/economic body that transcends the geography of the nationstate. A discourse about "professionalism," for example, can be viewed as related to these processes of modernization. Professionalism has been introduced to many countries that previously had no comparable word or concept. The discourses of professionalization are to establish a teaching corps seemingly with a particular expertise that transcends local boundaries and whose allegiance is to competence rather than ideology. If we treat discourses about reform as governing practices, then it is possible to consider how the rules, standards, and styles of reasoning of education are also injunctions as to how individuals should speak, think, and act in their everyday world. These injunctions are part of the social processes in which they occur: responsive and productive of power relations. 4. The changing patterns of state steering of education and governing draw attention to the social location of intellectuals. Social theorists and social historians have enabled us to understand that the social sciences are the sacred knowledge of modernity. What were formerly questions of the rabbi and the priest are now questions of the economist, the criminologist, the psychologist, and the educational researcher. The effects of social science can be found in the ways that individuals construct boundaries for themselves, define categories of good/bad, and envision possibilities. The ordering procedures of social science are elements in the production of power, as they have the potential effect of normalizing institutional patterns and social distinctions about "others"—that is, those who do not have the power to define, categorize, or order. A characteristic of current educational reform is the mobilization of research communities in a manner that seems to transcend national boundaries. Proposals for reform and strategies for evaluating national school systems are presented as though they incorporate universal characteristics. There is a certain international commonality in the strategies for rationalizing school systems, as well as in the development of international groupings of intellectuals who are concerned with alternative and antisystem projects. The development of international scholarly groups in education, the international movement of researchers at all levels of academia, and the increased market
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